Add this to the mountain of evidence that contradicts the conventional wisdom that employees’ use of social media is a drain on productivity: Among hourly workers, those that use five or more social networks are more productive and better at handling customer transactions.

These results come from a study from Evolv, which “harnesses the power of big data predictive analytics and machine learning to uncover the inefficiencies that undermine the performance of global workforces.”

According to the report, employees that are engaged in five or more social networks have a 1.57% higher sales convertion than their peers, and handle customer transactions in 2.76% less time.

“The fact that they’re better at handling customer interactions may stem from the fact that they’re inherently more social people,” the report says.

The study also suggests that hourly workers using social networks will stay longer with the company—92 days compared to 83 for those who don’t use social networks at all. Interestingly, workers using between one and four social networks stay 94 days, two days longer than the five-or-more crowd.

I’d love to point you to a copy of the report, but it’s not on the Evolv website. I first read it in an April 2 Mashable piece by Chris Taylor. There was no link to the report, though, so I spent a fair amount of time on the Evolv website, where a number of studies and reports are available, but none containing this data. I got in touch with the company directly, and the second representative I corresponded with sent me a one-page PDF with the data.

Whatever. The data reinforces a multitude of studies that offer other reasons access to social media drives rather than dampens productivity, like this one from McKinsey & Co., which sees a 20-25% productivity boost when employees use social media, and the unlocking of $1.3 trillion in annual value.

Or this one from Deloitte that argues social media is better than any other means for workers to address “exceptions” in their work.

Taking a different approach is this one, from the University of Melbourne, which demonstrated results similar to studies conducted by MindLab and Singapore National University.

And these are just a few of the studies not funded by companies that sell services to block or monitor employees that show the value of employees engaging in social media.

Join The Conversation

I would love to know if there is some link between the number of social networks and how ambitious the person is. Many social networks are used by individuals to build their networks, brand themselves, etc. If they move beyond Facebook, Pinterest and viewing YouTube videos to creating their own blogs, networking on LinkedIn and driving relationships and content through Twitter, they have already set themselves apart. Therefore the driver is not the social network engagement but the natural characteristics of the person to be ambitious and efficient. Playing devils advocate, of course. Thinking from different angles.